


Hunting Owls

by clear_sight



Series: Wraith [2]
Category: Criminal Minds (US TV), His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Case Fic, Death, Murder, the usual Criminal Minds things
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-14 18:39:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18057890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clear_sight/pseuds/clear_sight
Summary: Someone is hunting owl daemons in Gun Barrel City, Texas.  Reid, Ryth, and the rest of the BAU - along with new team member Elle Greenaway - are dispatched to the city.  But upon arrival, they find that they may be looking at not one killer, but two.  From there, the case only gets stranger.





	Hunting Owls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The team finds themselves assigned an odd case. It's nothing they haven't seen before, but they're still wary of calling on past cases.

“Do we know cause of death for the for this victim yet?” Reid asked as he and Ryth stood across Morgan and Ashta over a fifth body.

“I think Rossi and JJ are down at the morgue now,” Morgan told him.  A moment later, though, Ashta asked Ryth, “Can you smell that?”

The jaguar dæmon paused, opening her mouth and sniffing the air.  A few seconds later, she replied, “Smells like almonds. Or maybe…  No, definitely almonds, but there's something else there, too. I just can't figure out what.”

“That's probably the same cyanide that was found in the other poisoning victim,” Reid said.

Morgan looked down at his daemon in surprise.  “I don’t smell anything.”

Ashta gave him a _look_ and said, “Of course you don’t.  You’re a human, we’re proper predators with a decent sense of smell.”

Ryth just snickered quietly at the comment while Reid opened his mouth to offer commentary on the sensory capabilities of humans, wolves, and jaguars and the evolution of humans as predators.  He was cut off, however, by Morgan’s phone ringing.

Morgan flipped the phone open, Ashta looking up at him expectantly.  “Morgan. … Yeah, Hotch. … Still at the scene with Reid. … Yeah, we can be there in about ten minutes.  … Right.” Snapping the phone closed, he looked at Reid and said, “We’ve got another body.”

 

* * *

 

As the team gathered around their conference table, JJ stood in front of the projector screen, watching the team with the usual grim look that accompanied these briefings.  There was one relatively new pair of faces in the mix. It had been just over a year since Spencer and Ryth had joined the BAU, but they were no longer the junior-most agents.  That honor, if one wanted to call it an honor, now fell to Elle Greenaway and her jackrabbit daemon, Caleb. This would be only their third case, but they were adapting quickly to some of the oddities of the BAU.  

The team had already been unusual, but Ryth's willingness to express herself to the room at large rather than just her human or the other daemons had seemingly started a trend.  The others didn't do it nearly as often, but they would offer insight if they had it. And the humans around the briefing table would ask them questions back. It was understandable that a newcomer would be uncomfortable, but Elle and Caleb had settled in by the end of their second case.

JJ clicked a button on the remote and a picture came up on the screen.  “This is Amanda Harris of Gun Barrel City, Texas. She was found stabbed to death in her home last night.  The ME counted 19 wounds to her neck and torso. This is the second stabbing they've had in a month. The first -” another click and another picture “- was Rebecca Riley.  She was killed in her apartment two weeks ago. Same overkill, both women were local to the area, though not to the town, and both had burrowing owl daemons.”

“These women look nothing alike,” Morgan noted.  Ashta, who was just tall enough to see over the table, just cocked her head as though waiting for an answer.

“He’s right,” Elle agreed.  “Amanda Harris was white, had blue eyes, blond hair, and was only five feet tall.  Rebecca Riley mixed race, had brown eyes, curly brown hair, and was five foot eight.”

“Killing across racial lines is rare, but maybe he didn’t believe he had crossed that line, since Rebecca Riley was mixed race,” Hotch pointed out.

Reid narrowed his eyes in focus for a moment, then posed the comment, “What if it’s not about the women.  Or at least, not about any of their physical attributes besides them being cisgendered women. What if it’s about the daemons?”

“We’ve seen it before,” Gideon said, folding his hands on the table.  “The Deerstalker case in Minnesota was the same thing. Different MO, but it wasn’t about the men he killed.  It was about their daemons.”

JJ frowned and pointed out, “Guys, Gun Barrel City is not that big.  How many people with burrowing owl daemons can there possibly be in a town with not even six thousand people in it?”

“Given the surrounding area and the likelihood of encountering actual burrowing owls, I’d say quite a few,” Reid replied.  Ryth sat up and added, “Daemons usually settle in a form familiar to their human, even if the human doesn’t know much about the animal.”

Around the table there were nods of agreement from the other daemons.  It was Caleb who spoke next from where he sat in Elle’s lap to be able to see everyone gathered.  “Burrowing owls don’t build their own nests. They live in rabbit warrens and ground squirrel dens.  Maybe the unsub thinks they’re an indication of entitlement or greed?”

“It’s possible,” Gideon mused.  “People have all sorts of misconceptions about daemons.  We know we can’t build a profile around a suspect’s daemon, but the public hasn’t really grasped that yet.”

“At least we’re past the point of executing people with black cat or raven daemons as witches,” Elle muttered.  She had already been very outspoken about the way she felt that daemons were perceived.

“But not beyond the point where individuals will kill someone because of their daemon.  The Deerstalker killed men with doe daemons because he felt they were weak,” Gideon pointed out.

“So we need to pinpoint what in his life may have made him lash out against women with burrowing owl daemons,” Spencer said.  “Although that's if the pattern holds. He's only two people. We can't be sure he wouldn't kill men with burrowing owl daemons too.”

“Hopefully we can stop him before we find out if he'll cross gender lines,” Hotch replied.  “Alright, team, wheels up in thirty.”

 

* * *

 

It was a long flight from DC to Dallas, the closest airport.  About half an hour in, Garcia contacted them with an update.

“Hello my lovelies,” she greeted.  Pilli was in her lap, just barely visible in the view of her webcam.  “First of all, may I just be the one to say, Gun Barrel City, Texas? Really?  How much more stereotypical can they be?”

“On track, Baby Girl,” Morgan reminded her.  Ashta let her jaws fall open slightly in a silent laugh.  Ryth, curled up in the aisleway, rumbled softly in agreement.

“Right.  Murders,” she said.  “We may have another victim.  I'm not sure it's related, but Gun Barrel PD seem to think it is.  A man was killed this morning. Ricardo Sanchez. He had a burrowing owl daemon.  But he wasn't stabbed. He was poisoned. With, get this, deadly nightshade.”

“The hell?  Where do you even get hold of that?” Morgan wondered aloud.

“Right?” Garcia agreed.  “But that’s not all that was in his system.  There were trace amounts of cyanide, too. Not enough to kill him - at least not quickly - but combined with the nightshade the poor guy never stood a chance.”

“What, _nightshade_ wasn’t enough?” Morgan quipped.

Reid piped up, saying, “Guys, if this our guy, he's got two different MOs.  Stabbing _and_ poisoning.”

“And he's crossed gender lines,” Hotch pointed out.

“Which means there may be more victims than the locals realized,” Gideon surmised.  

“We need to get there now.”  Hotch’s tone didn’t leave any room for debate.  Not that any of them would have argued.

 

* * *

 

After the remainder of the flight and the interminably long hour drive from Dallas to Gun Barrel City, they found themselves in the local police station.  And as usual, Spencer and Ryth found themselves getting uncomfortable stares. Elle and Caleb seemed to notice right away, and Caleb scurried over to them.  Ryth slowed her pace so that the smaller daemon could keep up more easily.

“So, mind sharing your secrets?” he asked Ryth.  “How do you deal with being a cat in a world of dogs?”

Ryth scoffed, a small, feline grin on her face.  “It's not so hard. Especially once you realize half of them are flat out terrified of you.  That can be advantageous, especially for getting them to leave you alone and let you work in peace.  But I imagine it's different as a rabbit.”

“Very,” Caleb confirmed.  “When we worked sex crimes, there weren't nearly so many dogs.  And the ones there were, were smaller, or at least more friendly looking.  Still a lot of hunting dogs, but they were mostly retrievers or terriers. We had a couple of saint bernards and newfoundlands.  They're huge, but they're used for guarding flocks and for search and rescue. So they don't look as intimidating.

“And none of the dogs - or cats - in that unit ever looked at us like prey.  Maybe it was the unit itself. You can't act like a predator and work in the sex crimes unit.  There were also a lot more women than in a lot of these local PDs.”

Ryth nodded, still noting the way the dog daemons were watching them.  Some of their expressions had changed, as though they hadn't realized how they has been staring at the pair.  She knew that the way she addressed Caleb as a friend and the way Caleb did the same went just as far as what the both of them had said.

Without thinking much of it, Spencer dropped a hand down to rest on Ryth's back.  She was easily tall enough for him to reach. Jaguars were big cats and therefore did not purr, but Spencer still felt her rumble comfortingly under his hand.  

Once the whole team had assembled in the conference room, it didn't take long for them to get set up.  They had a map of Gun Barrel and the surrounding area tacked up pretty much immediately, with push-pin markers in one color for the stabbings and another color for the poisoning.  For now, they were treating the poisoning as possibly, but not necessarily related. Hotch was out in the bullpen talking to the local sheriff. Elle and Gideon had been dispatched to the morgue.  And of course JJ was talking to some of the locals about current and continuing press coverage. Which left Spencer and Morgan in the conference room.

“Tell me what's goin’ on in that big brain a’ yours, Pretty Boy,” Morgan said as he leaned back in the chair where he was seated on the opposite side of the conference table from the map.

“Just thinking,” Spencer replied absentmindedly.

Morgan raised an eyebrow at him, which of course Spencer didn't see with his back turned.  “Huhuh, not buyin’ it. There's no such thing as 'just’ thinking with you, Reid. Tell me what's on your mind.”

The two agents had gotten much closer over the past year.  Whereas they had started out wary of each other, one would never know that to see them now.  They had quickly become best friends. Possibly, Derek thought, a bit more than that, though he couldn't quite put his finger on how this was different.

Spencer interrupted that train of thought by replying, “It's the location of the deaths.  Something's off about them. The two _female_ victims, he breaks into their homes and stabs them to death.  It's an intimate setting. Given how little struggle there was, he either knew them or was waiting for them.  These feel like blitz attacks. But the _male_ victim died out in desert to the east of the city.”

“Yeah, and?” Morgan asked, starting to get an inkling of where Reid was going with this, but not quite having the whole picture yet.

“And it doesn't add up,” Reid replied.  Before Morgan could open his mouth to prod Reid for more answers, Ryth added, “Why blitz attack the women, but kidnap the man?  It would make more sense to blitz attack the larger, stronger victim and kidnap the smaller women. Or just kill them all in their homes.  The stabbings make sense if this is sexually motivated and our unsub is impotent, but then where does the man factor in?”

“Well, looks like somekitty was paying attention in all those profiling classes,” Morgan said, both eyebrows rising.

Ryth let out a derisive huff.  “Just because I'm shaped like a cat doesn't mean I sleep as much as a real one.  Besides, we've been in the field for over a year now.”

“Okay, okay,” Morgan replied with a smirk and his hands up.  “So what are you thinking, then?”

“The two female victims were stabbed, but the male victim was poisoned,” Reid repeated.  Morgan raised an eyebrow and Ashta cocked her head to the side. Reid had paused, as though working something out.  “Our killer is probably either weak or he's very small.”

“Or ‘he's’ a woman,” Ryth added.  “Women are more likely to use poison.”

“Yeah, but our killer didn't poison the other two victims.  It's a different MO.” Reid and Ryth seemed to have forgotten Morgan and Ashta were even in the room, they were so engrossed in their conversation with each other.  “Maybe we're not looking at one killer. Maybe we're looking at a team.”

“A team who _both_ have reason to kill people with burrowing owl daemons?” Morgan interjected.

“It could be one unsub,” Ryth said, looking up at Reid.

“In which case, it’s probably a woman,” Reid agreed.  

“Let’s take this to Hotch,” Morgan said.


End file.
